Mentoring children and youth: Principles, issues, and policy implications for community programmes in New Zealand

New Zealand Journal of Psychology, Jun 2000 by Evans, Ian M, Ave, Karen T

Some mentors can become critical of those being mentored, and attribute, as barriers to success, negative traits in the young people themselves (Jones, Bibbins, & Henderson, 1993). Such counterproductive attitudes may develop out of frustration when positive expectancies are negated by children from very challenging backgrounds. All experienced commentators affirm that it is important for mentors to have realistic notions as to the nature and possibilities of their role.

Community and Systemic Issues

Changing Systems

Despite general enthusiasm for mentoring programmes in many quarters, it is important to understand the assumed purpose of mentoring and the context in which it functions. If a mentoring programme is expected to provide a simple solution to a complex problem, there is likely to be disappointment to all concerned. Mentoring is not effective or ineffective in the abstract, but has specific outcomes in specific circumstances. For young people who already exhibit more extreme needs there is evidence that strengthening alternatives, systemic school reform, and broad based community partnerships are all necessary to provide effective services (Wehlage, Butter, Smith, Lesko, & Fernandez, 1989). However, Evans (Evans, Okifuji, Engler, Bromley, & Tishelman, 1993; Evans, Okifuji, & Thomas, 1995) found that while teachers were often willing to adopt a more mentor-like role, their tendency to blame families for children's difficulties at school needed to be modified first, before constructive changes in school "atmosphere" could occur.

Another misgiving we have is that "volunteerism" as a general concept is overly regarded by conservative political forces. Social analysts express concern over mentoring being a strategy that creates the impression of a grass-roots effort but which covers up deficiencies in more general social and educational policies. If the group of young people targeted are very economically disadvantaged, mentoring projects that do not change their living circumstances cannot be expected to produce results (Royse, 1998). It may be questioned as to whether any artificial arrangements are even desirable, given that ideal social supports are the natural ones available from one's social community.

The Target Populations

Various commentators have also criticised the concept of young people as "at risk", being concerned that this is somehow a new diagnostic category focussing on the supposed deficits of individuals (Tidwell & Corona Garrett, 1994), rather than thinking of a continuum of risky behaviours that lead on to more serious activities (McWhirter, McWhirter, McWhirter, & McWhirter, 1995). In New Zealand, the same kinds of behavioural problems for considering young people at risk have been identified as in other comparable countries, with the addition that the youth suicide rate is sufficiently high to warrant special consideration (e.g., Langford, Ritchie, & Ritchie, 1998). In this country, however, there is a particular danger in labelling Maori and Pacific Island youth "at risk" when educational initiatives targeted at early drop-out (or "push out" in many cases) have not changed the "cultural composition of teachers and counsellors, nor the curriculum and assessment procedures of state secondary schools" (Hindmarsh, Hohepa, & Murphy, 1995, p. 131).